Readers Care If Their Magazines Are Green

Are you willing to pay more for a greener magazine? A Heart Magazines survey found that 43 percent of respondents said they would pay more for a rag printed on recycled paper, while 39 percent said they would pay more for a magazine committed to eco-friendly practices.

Meanwhile, 43 percent of respondents said they would stop buying a product they regularly use if they learned that it was bad for the environment. The Hearst study was conducted to gauge how much readers cared about green claims in marketing today. "It showed us that consumers really are interested," George Janson, managing partner and director of print at the agency, told Advertising Age.

Still, the American public is anything but naive—almost three-quarters of respondents said they agreed that eco-friendly claims in advertising could be little more than greenwashing.

"You can't fool people and just slap a green logo on your ad and call yourself green," Mr. Janson said. "More and more, consumers want specifics about what companies are doing."